I was stunned to come across a very detailed, modern-looking color image in my web surfing last night – an image I both immediately recognized and knew didn’t exist. It was an interior shot of my favorite Frank Lloyd Wright creation, the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, New York. And I knew it didn’t exist because the building, completed in 1906, was demolished in 1950, so the only existing photos are almost universally black and white, and of poor image quality compared to today’s standards.

But there it was. A few mouse clicks revealed the secret: the image was real, but only in the virtual world. Spanish architect David Romero created it, along with dozens of others, using a variety of computer programs to “rebuild” not only the Larkin building, but also the Rose Pauson House in Phoenix, Arizona, which burned to the ground just a year after its 1942 completion.

Romero also created images of a Wright building that was never built: the Trinity Chapel he designed for the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

The pictures are simply amazing. See all of Romero’s images at his Hooked on the Past website.